Dragon's Dogma 2 discussion

Thought I'd start a thread for this one since I'll definitely be playing it. As I write this, it'll be out in about 18.5 hours.

In a thread started by @rorie upon the game's announcement about two years ago, I'd said that

However, looking into some of the reviews, it appears that the fear that the DD2 team might not have understood the secret sauce of DD1 really isn't a concern. Dragon's Dogma 2 is apparently just as contrary in its design decisions as its predecessor (on this point, Tom Chick's satirical review of DD1 remains probably my favorite written video game review ever). This time around, the Kotaku review seems to sum the point up nicely:

It's a good piece, and I'd recommend reading the whole thing. The big takeaway is that, like its predecessor, DD2 makes a lot of backasswards design decisions as far as modern open-world RPGs are concerned, including no multiplayer, side-quests that will fail if not completed quickly enough, food that will spoil in your inventory, and the already-mentioned lack of fast travel. For some people all of that will just seem obnoxious (even for me the food spoiling thing seems a little much), but I really admired the heck out of that first game and the way that it really forged its own path, and I suspect that I will also end up liking this second game quite a bit (though I'm not sure how they could possibly top the mind-fuck of the first game's ending).

Too bad I simply have less and less time to play these big, time-consuming triple-A games. Persona 3 Reload came out in early February and I'm less than halfway through it, and I just don't know if I'll be able to find the time to sink as many hours into DD2 as I'd like to. But we'll see. At the very least I'm sure I won't be able to resist dipping my toes into the water tomorrow night and at least forming some first impressions. I've already got my characters created thanks to the character creator they released a little over a week ago (as with the first game, it's an impressive one).

I bounced off the first game, but I'm going to buy this one. I think it was the vocation spotlight videos that really drew me into the hype, and reading several reviews (including Austin Walker's on Remap) have confirmed that I'm in the right mindset now to enjoy DD2. Helps that I'm getting close to the end of LAD: Infinite Wealth and open to another long-term playthrough of a game.

On the one hand I’m glad they’re making this game for the people who liked how weird it was and not just chasing the trends.

… On the other a lot of choices they made were not just quirky they were outright bad and fixed in DA and it seems they kept those too.

I’m sure it’ll be a good time but I’ll probably feel it could have used some compromises.

yeah, they got me!

DD has been that game/franchise i've never played despite my circle of favorite critics constantly singing its praises. and i'll be honest, from this place of self- admitted deep ignorance- i'm not sure i 'get it.'

i don't mean this to come off the wrong way (this is very much an intangible matter of taste), but i still kinda don't get it with the lead up to DD2 (nothing about the promo material/period has stood out as particularly remarkable). HOWEVER- i'm happy to admit when i've been a fool (this has happened plenty of times before with bands/music i don't 'get' the buzz with, but after spending time with i do a full 180)...

...and so i've purchased DD2 and i'm going to give it a fair-shake. i need to understand what this thing is for my own peace of mind, hah. also i'm generally interested to see an alternate approach to fantasy mechanics/systems.

I'll get this game eventually. Vinny's stream over at Nextlander made me want the game but 95 Canadian dollars is a bit too much of an ask for a game I'm not sure about so I'll wait for a sale. The game looks really fun though.

I’m going to be “that guy”. No 60 fps == no thanks. Backlog is huge this year already, so I’m actively looking for reasons to skip “good” games.

I've really never understood framerate snobbery. Maybe it's because I grew up playing games in the 80s and 90s when there was no such thing as a 60 fps game. But when I'm weighing whether to pick up a game, the frame rate has never been a thing it had even occurred to me to consider. Why does this even matter to people? E.g., I go back and play the King's Field games on PS1 all the time, which have sub 20 fps. They always look chunky when I first fire them up, but then I play for a few minutes and invariably my eyes adjust and I stop noticing; that's just how the game looks, and it's fine. I still love it.

FWIW I can't help but think when fps comes up as a topic about the fact that films are to this day still usually shown in theaters at 24 fps because that was the standard established literally a century ago as the slowest fps at which people wouldn't notice the individual frames--and hence the cheapest to produce. And it's been that way for so long that when movies like the Hobbit films were shown at some theaters at 48 fps or 60 fps in 2012, people hated it because it didn't look "cinematic"... which is to say, it just didn't look like the thing they'd been conditioned to expect after many years of going to movies. I guess it really is just what you're used to?

Also, sorta related, I was incredibly amused at how pleased Patrick and Cado were over at Remap when they discovered that Lunacid had programmed in the ability to cap its fps at King's Field levels. They then played the whole game at 24 fps, which really does give it a whole different feel.

@atheistpreacher:I'd just recently said this on a post about "the sorry state of Bloodborne" on the BB sub.

-------

For me, I remember a huge shift around the time console ports to PC starting running more or less reliably. Everyone at Giant Bomb for example got CBSi to put up for state of the art gaming PCs around 2014 or so, right around the time of that console generation launching...and all of a sudden, all I'd hear anybody talk about was framerate.

I always get downvoted for this in bigger threads but I legitimately think certain games just feel more "natural" at 30. Rockstar and Naughty Dog/Sony first party games chief among them. I immediately downshifted the PS4 Last of Us to 30fps, God of War plays great at 60 but it ruins the cutscenes, etc. It's such a case by case basis for me.

Like, just this past month I played Infinite Wealth on performance and FF7R2 on graphics. I play Helldivers 2 on performance and FFXIV on ultra graphics. I play The Witcher 3 on the super ray tracing mode yet couldn't imagine Gran Turismo 7 or Metal Gear Solid V running at anything less than a smooth 60. Or, Alan Wake 2 is so cinematic...why wouldn't I want it to run close to the 24fps of film?

I started calling the Extremely Online Gamer "frame addicts" because their commentary often reads like the sort of min/max behavior I can't really get behind in games, either. These are the sorts of people that scoff because they can't overclock to 120fps , y'know? They're lunatics.

Happy to see that the developers were not rank cowards, the pawns talk even more now.

I see the game getting immediately review bombed on Steam for its DLC which like fair enough Capcom does dumb shit with it's microtransactions but people sure do conveniently choose when to be mad about it.

Agreed, I hadn't been aware of the microtransactions, looked 'em up, they're definitely gross, but plenty of selective outrage going on here. Most (all?) recent Capcom games have done this kind of nonsense. E.g., the RE4 remake let you buy "golden tickets" that would fully upgrade weapons. But I don't remember that game getting review bombed.

Unrelated: Having played the game a bit, so far the most amusing thing for me is the cutscenes that play when you cook meat at camp. Those videos appear to be just straight-up live action meat, or else they're so ultra-realistic that I can't tell the difference. I was immediately reminded of how good the food looked in Monster Hunter World, and that Monster Hunter devs worked on this. Some of them must have a serious meat fetish.

And another amusing nugget: from what I can tell there's equal opportunity skimpy armor in this game. In so many games the women end up in this ridiculously risqué armor while the men... do not. No great mystery as to the reason why. But in this game, if you want your male arisen/pawn to run around in a thong, well, you can do that. Which just makes me smile.

@efesell: Monster Hunter World, which is sitting at Very Positive (88%), has exactly 200 items listed in its DLC section on Steam. LAD: Infinite Wealth locked off NG+ in DLC and is 91% positive. Truly feels like some people have nothing better to do than to write reviews for games they don't intend to keep because they have Denuvo or microtransactions. This is not a defense of either of those things, people can do whatever they want with Steam reviews, but they do look like petulant idiots.

As for the framerate: is it really that important to a game's performance? I was under the impression that it was a piece of the puzzle, but a 60 fps game will not automatically run better than a 30 fps game. If my understanding is correct (or partially correct), then it sort of feels like drawing a hard line on framerate has become shorthand for advance complaints about how a game might perform. I had no performance issues with Starfield, a recent game locked at 30 fps, and I'm sure I've played other games that felt buttery smooth that didn't even kiss 60 fps. I just kind of ignore reports about framerates these days because the information ends up meaning nothing to me, barring something about the game dipping to single digits.

@atheistpreacher AFAIK the food scenes are indeed live action. There was an article somewhere which I'm too tired to find but it's a hilarious idea

@allthedinos: Yeah I mean I would respect a consistency if someone is legit angry about dlc like that but this all just feels like The Gamers need to be mad about something again.

Now if you wade through all of the useless sludge there are a lot of reports of performance problems on the PC release so that's a different matter but most people are just yelling about MTX and in the process making a whole lot of shit up about it.

RE: DLC, much like Resident Evil 4, Infinite Wealth, Street Fighter VI, Metal Gear Solid V, Gran Turismo 7, Mortal Kombat 1 and other such games with plenty of opportunities for microtransactions...I just take solace in knowing that I can ignore it completely and enjoy the game for nothing more than what it is.

I understand the argument that "you can't trust the game design" when certain mechanics are attached to microtransactions...but then I think you have to take the word of those who've actually played the game, particularly reviewers who weren't ever aware they'd have the opportunity to circumvent them for a price, that you can trust the game design. MGSV and SFVI are not lesser games because they're littered with opportunities to spend money. They're simply littered with opportunities to spend money.

As for the game itself...I picked a mage because I kind felt like I wanted to stay out of the fray for once in a game (I'm very much a Gerstmann who picks the most melee/DPS class and gets busy) but it seems I've made for a very hard start. I've got a shield now, and as long as I remember to equip it that's super useful, but I feel extremely vulnerable all the time. I'm dying a lot, especially if anything other than a basic goblin or skeleton shows up. Luckily, the autosave warning before the first inn seems at least a little tongue in cheek, as I've so far always spawned right before the fight I just lost.

I'm enjoying myself so far, hopefully I'll start to see how all the "emergent" stuff can play out after the weekend when I can put some serious time in.

I just bought Monster Hunter Rise and it also has a bajillion optional pieces of DLC, nearly all of them cosmetic. The only one I've noticed so far that has raised my eyebrow is that you have to buy tokens to edit for your character's physical appearance after you created them (the game includes at least one or two when you buy it though so it isn't as bad). That was kind of bizarre but also you can just create new characters if you want (not to mention that many of the armour sets completely hide your character anyway).

This type of thing has been in Capcom games for years now and isn't new. I'm not sure why people are surprised by it. Even the various versions of Street Fighter IV were crammed full of costumes and other DLC. If you don't like it, don't buy Capcom games. Simple as that. I've owned and played hundreds of hours of various different Capcom games and never once felt the need to buy any of this stuff. It's there if you want it but it's not like the games are designed to funnel you into getting any of it.

On the FPS thing, I think it heavily depends on the game and isn't something you can take some hard line stance on. On some games, playing at 30 FPS can feel like the video game equivalent of wading through molasses. On others, the game running at 30 FPS isn't actually noticeable at all. If the developers specifically account for the fact their game runs at 30 when tuning how the characters move and act, it can be indistinguishable from a game running at 60. A game intended and tuned to run at 60 running at 30 though can be quite unpleasant. It's always a case-by-case thing.

@nodima: We all are entitled to our opinions, but this, this is true insanity hahaha. (Just teasing)

I fought some wolves and was not warned that they hunt in packs, so really it's all up in the air now.

I started out playing an archer and have stuck with it so far, but IDK... I remember bows feeling better in the first game? And I likewise feel extremely vulnerable; unless I'm missing something there's no button to quickly dodge out of the way of an attack as a ranged character?

Also a bummer that all vocations now just have one weapon, no melee + ranged that you used to have in the first game, with the exception of the one arisen-exclusive hybrid class that I haven't unlocked yet. But for now, as a ranged class you just have no good way of dealing with enemies that get close. Genuinely not sure what vocation I'll ultimately settle into. Mystic Spearhand certainly looks cool, but I have no idea how to unlock it.

It’s not that I think all games need 60 fps, it’s that I don’t have time to play every good game released these days. Even minor strikes are enough to warrant skipping something.

My first game was “Hunt the Wumpus” on a TI-99/4, so it’s not an age thing.

Not going to argue, because *opinions*, but I’m willing to wait until I possibly have more time, the inevitable DLC is released, and <$20 sale that’ll happen 5 years or so from now on this one.

Thief really seems to dominate the early game, you're too squirrely for anything to get ahold of you.

Archer will probably be back on top when the game becomes mostly a series of fighting Big Dudes but until then it feels a bit underwhelming.

You can high five and fist bump your pawns at the end of battle sometimes and it makes me smile every time.

The game seems identical to Dragon's Dogma 1 in almost every way.

+Hands down the best ever character customization engine ever created.

+Bigger, more seamless, beautiful world thanks to next gen hardware

+Reduced Stat Growth means you dont need to min/max and spend the entire game not playing as the class you want so you can theoretically play as the best version of the class you want

-significantly less gear customization and layering (This is a HUGE disappointment for me.)

The world seems more alive and fun and less static but other then that I guess I'm luke warm to it. None of the classes seem that fun or have grabbed me yet.

Considering how awful it felt/feels to stumble onto a cabin encumbered by, uh, Norse gods determined to end you for disrespecting their property rights, it's equally and oppositely awesome to see some beast pop a health bar with four or so extra pips below it and realize about 10 minutes into the fight "oh I've got this."

And that's my "OK Austin Walker, maybe I understand you" moment. I can write a sentence that reads terrible about a scenario that sounds terrible and feel excited to share it.

I think the scale of the backlash toward the game is more about people being fed up of AAA shenanigans than the game itself, plenty of AAA games have released with issues before and besides a little vocal annoyance the game gets patched and people are ok again, same with the mtx it gets sprung on people at launch then the anger dies down once people actually play the game, but it keeps happening and the anger can only build and build for so long before something has to change.

It seems pointless to me to spend hundreds of millions making these things just to screw up the delivery, and the damage for doing so is going to get worse.

@cikame: Yeah but the thing is... if it were building and building and people were more and more outraged by it over time that's understandable, useful even because it might eventually mean something.

But instead it builds... unless it's a really popular series and then it's fine... but then oh suddenly it's too much now that it's for a weird critical darling game.

I have since restarted the game playing purely as a rogue with a non-magick pawn and have been having a vastly improved time. The combat gameplay in this game is really bar-none. Playing a rogue feels to me to be the most interactive. The ensnare ability is good fun, you can yank small creatures, knock down off balance creatures and large monsters, pull down airborn creatures or even hang on and slow down a creature from getting away if you pull off in the opposite direction at the same time. Its fantastic. Scales off of your knock-down stat too it seems like aftern boosting with with an augment from warrior.

@junkerman: Whereas I've found the ranged classes are more my bag. I think I've settled fairly firmly into Magick Archer, though I actually found the Sorcerer quite fun to play (unexpectedly, since I remember the casting classes being really boring to play in the first game).

I've fallen deep into this game. I have many thoughts, but I want to get through endgame before I write a bunch about it. Probably going to have to write a blog, there's too much to talk about with this crazy thing.

The three classes I've spent a decent amount of time with so far are the dragoon and mage (maxed out), plus 2/3 of the way through thief after Gerstmann raved about it. I really appreciate how different they each feel, and as I said somewhere on the Giant Bomb subreddit mage was a stellar class to play while getting a feel for the game, while dragoon has been so addictive now that I'm less scared of getting into prolonged fights.

One criticism I've seen become more and more prevalent that I totally understand is that the enemy variety is well and truly shockingly spare, but it also stubbornly throws enemy spawns at you like any classic SNES RPG. The panoramic effect of which is that several long treks once you're in the mid to late 20s feel artificially lengthened by mobs that are both non-threatening yet unrelenting, forcing you to deal with them more because they're annoying than they're engaging to beat up on.

To that end, though, I finally realized the value of the stamina replenishing roes and other items; you collect more than enough items to craft plenty of their various forms, and if you just chug them as you make your way across the map the stamina depletion is way less annoying than it seems at face value. The missions that taught me this lesson were the weird poison infliction missions once you finally access the second region (for me, about 27 hours in) so I think it might've been nice to have a mission that inspires you to really think about those items much earlier, but it significantly changed how I approach travel in a really positive way.

Ultimately, I also don't necessarily mind being overly familiar with every enemy in this game. The combat is just fun enough that it doesn't much matter to me that outside of bosses I'm not sure I'll see even one more unique enemy in this game. I'm almost more disappointed in how many pawns I meet at the runes are either fairly generic or literally stuck with the name MainPawn. I didn't go crazy with my big cat boy Moe by any means, but at least he has some visual identity. Meanwhile most pawns I come across seem to be either intensely Just Another Guy or even more intensely Hentai Fever Dream.

@atheistpreacher: I did end up having fun playing the Archer in my second run once I figured out the whole aiming thing. Toppling a Cyclops from a kneeling position with that knockdown arrow is supremely satisfying.

It also gave me a similar feeling of battlefield control as the thief that I felt I was missing on my first playthrough playing as a Warrior.

@junkerman: I actually did prefer the standard bow in the first game over the magick archer bow, because while the latter had the lock-on thing, it seemed to do less DPS because the locks were relatively slow; you could do more damage with the regular bow if you were aiming well. But in DD2, there's now a way to switch the magick bow's "mode" from a larger to a smaller circle, and the latter locks faster. Not actually sure that the standard bow out-DPSes the magick one now.

Whirling/Spiral Arrow seems to end up being the Archer's best skill IMO (unlocks at level 6/8). It stunlocks small targets and does good continuous damage on large ones.

Also, with regard to control, it seems to really help to do the dwarven upgrades that increase knockdown power. Suddenly you're flattening enemies that you weren't before.

Two things I've found pretty overblown, as they tend to be with these things, after 50 hours: the lack of map pathing and the lack of fast travel. In the former, much like Elden Ring pretty much every significant location is marked on your map as you discover it, and much like...every other open world game, you get a waypoint for pretty much every major mission. Some quests start without waypoints, but after you've uncovered the end goal it pops up like clockwork. The map itself is relatively spartan (in fact a little less informative than Elden Ring) but they'll give you reason to look at it as much as any other game. Not sure why such a big deal was made about this.

As for the latter, it seems there are actually plenty of ferrystones and port crystals for when you need them. I've got one port planted with two in my storage, and have usually been carrying 4-8 ferrystones that I don't use just out of worry they won't restock in stores. It also seems like as long as you doze off in an oxcart, you'll get a 50/50 shot or better that the caravan will make it unscathed.

...But, I concede that the ways some quests start is quite obscure, and they're pulling some real Elden Ring shenanigans with the ways some characters move around the map. I'm no coward when it comes to guides (remember the daughter of...Godrick or whomever that basically bopped all over the map? impossible before they added NPC trackers) but where I'm at, having to give a character named Hugo some advice and my most significant quest (in that the game is constantly re-prioritizing it) appears to take place behind a big door some other quest will open...it's a bit wild that some quests in this area begin in the other city, an hour and a half trek across the map.

I've loved my time with the game, but I have to admit I've cooled on it a bit now that I'm in my mid-40s level wise and the very real complaint that there's not nearly enough enemy variety is making every 40-plus minute excursion a bit of a slog, unlike the first 30 hours or so of the game when I was still uncovering new locations and landmarks.

Lastly - dragons are still hella scary. I just run away, and I can take down a griffin in about a minute at this point.

I want to like this game, but I feel like I'm genuinely "playing it wrong." I've accidentally sequence broke 3 quests, one of which is a major one, and it feels like I am stumbling through things like character interactions and stories by doing nothing more severe than "fully exploring areas." That said:: the gameplay absolutely sings. I'm a tanky sword-and-shield fighter supported by a mage pawn, and whatever I rotate the other two pawns to: I have a blast with the "bigger" encounters. It's everything in-between those encounters that leaves me a little blase.

If that's "the point," then I might pick it up when I have a bit more time to really sink my teeth into it and get stuck in, but at this point: it feels to me like a medieval fantasy theme park with INCREDIBLE rides. But underpaid, underappreciated Renaissance Faire background extras playing every single character and NPC, all following a surprisingly strict script, regardless of what I do or in what order I interact with them.

Coming to this after Baldur's Gate 3 might have been something of a mistake, as it's clear they're going for VERY different things, but I can't help but feel like I'm having an oddly glitchy, unintentionally chaotic time.

welp, on the other side of it now. i think my back of the box quote for my time with DD2 would be:

"usually fun; never profound."

this is probably the strongest 7.9 out of 10 i've ever played. i'm really glad i took the plunge- the 3rd person perspective and combat has me second-guessing any residual affection i might have had for Elder Scrolls, and there's a 20hrs-ish sweet spot where everything was clicking in a super compelling way. we also love a freely swappable class system.

in the long run- the game stopped showing me new things sooner than i hoped, the narrative held the emotional space of an absentee father (when it tried to show up i cared it wasn't there), and for all the talk of profound 'friction' it kinda just felt out of 2006 (as opposed to interesting).

ultimately a good time (if not an incredible one); though i've never felt more certain that every person on this planet wants something different from open world games (there is no platonic ideal). for every person wishing Atreus or Aloy had a mute button there's me begging my pawns to move past the obsession with MATERIALS. and likewise it's neat we need to take in the scenery, but jesus christ are these carts made out of styrofoam? and couldn't this late game quest bouncing between diametric opposite cities have been an email?

@undeadpool: Im leaning on this take.

This is basically my version of what I wish Monster Hunter was - killing big monsters is fun, satisfying and the class system and gameplay is great!

I find the world itself to be pretty interesting to explore, the caves are labrynthine and compelling but there is a lack of variety and new things as others have said as the game goes on - and when you're navigating the world there isnt really a progression away from these earlier encounters. You're still fighting lizard guys and popping tails off and getting goblins jumping on you at hour 1 and hour 20 and presumably hour 30 and 40. I would have appreciated more Elden Ring esque WTF is THAT shifts between areas or maybe plot triggers given the smaller size of its world.

Well, this was interesting.

I've been known to enjoy Stephanie Sterling's takes on things, even when I don't always agree with them. But they put up a review for DD2 that I only saw today, and it's... kind of a bad review? It's not that they didn't like the game; Dragon's Dogma was always for a fairly niche audience. But it felt like they were unwilling to really critically engage, except on the most superficial level, or to try to meet the game on its own terms... which I think is really required since its design is so pointedly and intentionally different from basically every other open-world action RPG of the last decade or more.

And then I discovered that someone had written a review of Sterling's DD2 review. I agree with most of it. The line that stuck out to me was that Sterling was "misidentifying developer intent for publisher malice." Yeah, pretty much. I dunno, I though Sterling was a better critic than this.